7 years have passed since the original, and now it’s here, as it was meant and rightfully deserves to be.

I’m so glad that I managed to finish the game this year after all! Due to the scope and overall meat of the game (30-50+ hours of content), I’m a little surprised that I managed to have this done in less than a year. The thing is though; I could’ve never done this without the wonderful help that I’ve received. Here we go:

Special Thanks

Adena:

My good and inspiring Indonesian friend, what would I’ve done without you? If it weren’t for your technical help, this game would suffer from the weird graphical glitch with the Caterpillar script that was evidenced in CO3. Your early testing reports were of great help as well. Thank you for everything and especially for being such a good and supporting friend. Our talks motivated me a lot to buckle and keep working hard on the game. I hope everything goes well for you in life and I can’t wait to play your upcoming games!

amerk:

It’s been very nice to have an old fan of the originals still sticking around. Your critique on the early parts of the demo has been very helpful. Overall, your support and kind comments have meant a lot to me. I hope you, as an old fan, will be able to enjoy revisiting the Castle again after all these years. Thank you.

boos405:

Your comeback truly awakened something in me. Something that I thought was long lost, together with the passing of the YT community. There’s no doubt that your return motivated me. Thanks for your kind and supportive comments! I hope you’ll find the game to play the game sometime. Take care and I hope your gets better!

captainregal:

Your review gave me a lot of things to think about. I’ve gone back to it everyone now and then, making sure that I put the feedback I agree on in practice to the game. Thanks for taking your time to review and I hope to hear what you think about the game as a whole. An updated review for it would be really interesting.

Dalph:

Thank you so much for kind comments and support. It really means a lot to me. As you are another fan of the originals, I can’t wait to hear your thoughts on the remake. I sure hope it will live up to your expectations, and perhaps even beyond!

Frogge:

I’m very proud to have you on-board as the game’s official Pun Writer. Your puns have brought me (and others) many good laughs. Your constant support has also motivated a great deal. Uploading screenshots felt more meaningful, since I always knew that they would be followed by some form of pun (or in some cases useful critique). You are without a doubt the kindest frog that I’ve ever met. Hopefully, we’ll be able to work on some games together in the future. Duo think that we’ll make a good team? Ha! Caught you off guard with that one, didn’t I?

GreatRedSpirit:

This awesome scripting wizard has helped me out numerous time. If it weren’t for your help, the Auto-Life state would’ve been a buggy mess. I’m also pretty sure that you helped me out with adjusting the game’s max level cap. The help I’ve received from you have done wonders to the game on the technical side. I’m still not sure how I’ll ever repay you, but I hope I get the chance to do so sometime in the future. Thank you so, so much.

kelarly

One of my biggest idols and not just in RM, but life in general. Without you, this remake wouldn’t even exist! I’m glad to see you happy with this remake and I can’t wait to hear the original Lord of the Castle’s thoughts on the game.I owe a lot to you, buddy! Thanks for everything.

Your critique (even from CO3) has been very helpful. I tried to take as much from it as possible and use it to make this game even more polished. It’s all the little things that count, right? I hope you’ll have some time to replay this game sometime. I’d love to hear your wise thoughts on the finished product. Thank you very much for sharing your valuable thoughts on my games.

Linkis:

Thank you for your continuing support. I’m really happy to see familiar faces sticking around. Let’s hope that the game won’t be too hard, eh? Let me know if you’d ever get stuck or need help with anything in particular.

Matseb2611

Like ksjp17, your critique and inputs have helped me a lot to shape this game into something even shinier and more enjoyable. Feedback is so crucial, since you’re always very biased with your games as a developer. I’m looking forward to hear your thoughts on the finished game and I really hope that you’ll see it as a step up from CO3. Thanks for your feedback and overall support. I’m looking forward to play some of your games. Hopefully, I’ll be able to return the favor.

Riff:

Thank you for beta testing the game and finding those small errors in the dialogue. Everything counts!

the13thsecret:

Working with you have been a blast! Overall, I think we did a good job at working together. We faced many trials together, which we thankfully managed to power through. If all goes well for us in the future, I wouldn’t mind working with you again. Cheers and good job! The remake wouldn’t have been as good if wasn’t for your awesome talents! Cheers, buddy!

WalkerMage102:

Thank you for bearing with me during beta testing. I know a lot of patches were made, but I think they’ll all be worth it in the end. Also, thank you for your kind comments and support!

Zachfoss:

My fellow Canadian Mango, how can I ever forget about you? Even though we may not talk as much as we used to do nowadays, I’m still thankful for the talks we’ve had every now and then. Thank for your love and support, bro. I haven’t forgotten about OR by the way. Good luck with it!

Zaphire98:

Your support truly motivated me during the game’s development. I hope that you’ll enjoy this game, as I know I’ll enjoy DoR and CD. Just remember to give me a call when you need a tester/or some help with your game(s). Keep at it, you’ll have your games finished soon enough!

Zodiac12:

Thanks for your feedback on the demo! I hope you will find attacking more useful now than it was before. I’m also glad to see another fan of the original. Cheers and let me know what you think of remake!

I’d like to thank everyone else that have helped/supported me. If you feel left out, then don’t hesitate to let me know! For now, it’s time for me to take a little break and refuel my batteries.

I want to wish everyone here a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! This game is my Christmas gift to you and I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I had making it!

Some of you may be very excited for this and some of you may be a tad disappointed. Why? Well, since I’m making a Castle Oblivion game again.

“What’s wrong with you, luiishu!? You already gave us one of these, heck, you even completed the trilogy! Just give us something new, something fresh, something that’s originally yours! Whatever happened to Legend of Mango or that other game you were teasing us with?

Gargh! I’m so mad you, game designer! I mean, get it together for realsies!”

Let’s address these questions/assumptions:

1. What’s wrong with you?

Nothing, really. Actually, life feels pretty good now when you talk about it!…

2.You already gave us one of these, heck, you even completed the trilogy!…

Yes and no. I originally started working on CO3 just because I thought the concept was easy. Pretty straight forward plot, Floor/level progressing, simplicity (or kelarly made it look very simple from CO1 & II. Not all of these points were true.

The game suffered from a serious lack of planning, up to the point that I basically just knew that the 8th Floor was going to be in outer space. A lack of planning can cause various problems, like: plot-holes, style inconsistency and sometimes unnecessary adding to the game (or filler, as it is called in some occasions). I did not see all the extra hard work I made as filler. The Castle Oblivion series IS (intended or not) a dungeon crawler at its heart. The length and scope of the game added to that experience IMO.

It doesn’t cut though that CO3 was only meant to be my first game and not my first EPIC. I simply made it because I wanted to fulfill my big dream: to finally finish a single game of my own. I did fulfill it and it still to this day feels great to have it accomplished.

In short: CO3 was never meant to take so long to develop, but in the end I finally made it. If you’ve been waiting for me to just finish the game, so that I can start a new one immediately, I’m sorry to keep you waiting all these years. That was the plan at first though (I’ll go into detail more a bit later.)

I did sort of “end” the trilogy, in a way at least. A complete remake of the two original COs has been in both me and some fans mind for quite a long time.

The reason why I’m remaking the games though? Why now?

This is because of a man known as the13thsecret. He contacted me a couple of months ago and told me that he enjoyed CO3 and would like to do something with the series with me. I told him about the plans I had for the CO remakes and as he is a writer, he gladly offered himself to write the main script and plot for the remakes. This is a pretty big thing for me, especially after experiencing how much time and effort it takes to make a full game by yourself.

Had it not been for the13thsecret, I would not have been working on the remakes this early, or any games seriously before, after CO3s release (mainly since I was on a vacation/recovery from my gam mak adventures and more focused on finishing my studies and getting a job).

As you probably can tell from reading this, it relieves quite a ton to be working with an actual writer. Some of you may know that my first language isn’t actually English, but Swedish.

Since I released CO3, working on games in teams have crossed my mind quite often, since it lets the members of the team focus on their own individual strengths.

3. Whatever happened to Legend of Mango or that other game you were teasing us with?

On hold and definitely not forgotten. None of my previous game are officially canceled and they never were.

There are many old and new games/ideas/concepts that I’d like to try out in the future. As it seems now, I am trying to walk the path of teamwork, so that I can use my time to work on my strengths instead of trying to be do it like Jack (-of all trades, in case someone reading this is called Jack or feels offended somehow).

This is what I’ve got for now. I don’t want to fall asleep on my keyboard and accidentally deleting this entire post (I’m not bored writing this, just very tired from a hectic week with sleep issues etc.). To put a smile on this blog post (and hopefully on your face as well), I’ll top this off with some nifty screenies from my truly awesome and new project!

All field maps (south/west/east/north) are now completed (map-wise). It was a lot of hard, repetitive work, but in the end it doesn’t even matter. Literally. With that out of the way, I’ll finally be able to start mapping the towns and some dungeons as well.

However, now when my new project(s) (which I’m not working on alone) have kind of begun, I think I’ll focus more on those for a little while. I have mostly tinkered with the resources and battle system and so far it’s going pretty good (thanks to my good buddy Adena who helped me solve a bug).

I’m currently trying to fix another bug that was quite annoying in Feral Dreams (when battlers attack at the same time while cancelling their attacks). I’m not sure, but I think it is the Steal Skill that’s the cause, but I’m not too sure yet.

I’m sorry for not showing any maps this time, since I figured I’ve shown you enough fields already (can’t spoil you with everything).

With that, I’m out and I’d like to wish y’all a merry Christmas and a happy new year as well! Have an awesome one!

So, I did manage to finish the field map I talked about earlier. Here it is:

The whole map in the editor:

(Please ignore the passability errors, since they’re only caused by the script I’m using to take full map shots.)

Some other good news has surfaced! Me and my Writer have been planning (and working) on a few games the past months. Due to circumstances, we haven’t been able to start working on the game(s) for real. Until just now.

Despite the fact that these projects will hinder my progress a little on the game I’ve been rambling on that you know very little about, I will be able to come out with a new game(s) much sooner. The main reason is that I have a writer who’s both making the plot outline AND the main script. There are other reasons as well, but I can’t tell since they would only ruin the surprise (“Mango, what’s the deal with these secret projects? Why don’t you just announce something for once!”)

In time, I will announce more info on these secret projects. I don’t really want to show off my games too early, since it would make the waiting for you guys SO much longer (see, I’m just trying to be a nice guy!). All of my projects are still in fairly early development.

I will keep you guys/gals updated on the stuff is I go. As I used to say: “If I’m not active on the forums, talking about my games, there’s a big chance that I’m actually hard at working on them.”

I would kind of like to upload the blog with some misc. news on my projects/progress reports. Well, it’s been almost three weeks now, hasn’t it? First off: real life stuff, secondly: Jak and Daxter and Prelude of Identity.

I finally uploaded the hidden/optional bosses of CO3! If you missed it, check out this video I made for it:

I did work on my new game quite a lot two weeks ago, but took a small break last week to catch up with some other stuff. ATM, I’m currently focusing on the mapping in my name game. Here, have at you!

The field maps are taking forever since there are many of them and some are quite big. This one for example:

The game will have for field areas: a southern , a western, an eastern and a northern part. What you see above is the eastern part. Heh, it almost looks more like a river! The reason why it’s quite big is because I wanted to have the whole area as one part, since it tends to give a slightly bigger feel to it (it feels a bit easier for me to map as well in this case).

I will probably upload the complete map for the eastern field once I’m done with it. A free mapping tip from the mango: always start with the basis. Map out all of the A-tiles the first thing you do. In general I always find it easier to focus on one thing at the time. Nowadays, I usually start off with the cliffs and then get started with the ground.

All in all, this is most of the stuff I’ve been working on lately. Prelude of Identity was a pretty awesome game and left me with lots of inspirations for game ideas. I liked the simplicity to it (you don’t need faces, 8+ playable characters, 500 skills etc.) Too bad the sequel can’t be downloaded due to the dead DL sites (and forums). If you haven’t played PoI, then you definitely should at least give a go! I can assure that it’s worth the play!

Guess I’ll see guys next time (on Sunday, hopefully) then! Have a good one!

Some more maps I’ve recently made for my new project. It’s a lovely forest path!

These are not only filled with peaceful animals and wild life, there will even be monsters! Monsters roaming around in the shape of a smoke, in other words: visible enemy encounters!

Right now, I’m currently working on some field maps for the game. Once done, these will connect the game with its various areas the player can visit. No world map for this one!

One big thing that is completed for the is its plot. But then what’s the missing? Well, I still need a main script for the game. Yes, I’ve decided to recruit a writer for this game! Main reason being shortage of time and also, a lack of skill in English grammar. I’m going to make forum post/blog soon about this later.

Still, if you’re already interested in some way; don’t be afraid to tell me…actually: be afraid if you WON’T tell me! ;P

Stay tuned for some more (field) maps! Hopefully I’ll be able to find a willing writer for the game in the near future!

I’ve been mapping a bit this past week, since I decided it would be about time to make some REAL progress on my second game.

This is Holmint; which is the first town you visit in the game!

This is basically the first peek/eye candy I’ve shown to the public on how my second game game will look like (more or less). What do you think? It has both Mack and RTP in it, but the thing is: most of the stuff are edited! I have to say that I’m pretty satisfied myself with how it turned out.

Unfortunately, you’ll have to wait a bit longer till’ I’ll finally announce the project. For now, you guys will just have to make up your own theories and guesses. Stay tuned for more!